History

The Agricultural Information Resource Centre is a Semi Autonomous Government Agency (SAGA) in the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock development, State Department of Agriculture. The Centre was established in 1966 with a primary role of providing agricultural information services to farmers, capacity building of extension staff and other stakeholders through mass communication. The Centre was also involved in carrying out training programs covering communication skills, supervisory and management skills for extension and other development workers. The emphasis then was on information dissemination using mobile cinema vans, radio, Television and printed materials.

The Centre however, was not able to secure adequate resources over time through the normal government allocations for its operations and investments. In an effort to make AIRC financially sustainable in the long term, the Ministry of Agriculture and the Overseas Development Administration (ODA) engaged a consultant in 1991 on the future development of the Centre. The consultant developed a three-year Business Plan including a recommendation for the establishment of a Revolving Fund. Subsequently, a Development Strategy and a proposal for the Revolving Fund for AIRC commercial activities were prepared. The development strategy aimed at rationalizing AIRC operations to make it able to exploit its comparative advantage, to retain revenue earned from the commercial activities, to enhance the quality of service and thereby be more effective, efficient and responsive to the media and information needs of the Kenyan farmers, extension providers and the agriculture sector in general.

In support of the strategy, GOK and ODA initiated the Support to Enhance Performance (STEP) Project in 1993 that was to lead AIRC into a commercial entity capable of developing its capacity to achieve the initial goals and mandate of providing appropriate agricultural and related information to various stakeholders. In the same year, the Government created a revolving fund through Legal Notice No. 163 of June 25, 1993 to facilitate AIRC to operate commercially and to retain the revenue it earns to meet its production costs.

Kenya Vision 2030 identifies agriculture as one of the key sectors to deliver the 10 percent annual economic growth rate envisaged under the economic pillar and also as an accelerator to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goal 2.

The center is currently mandated with a primary role of:

• Provision and dissemination of Agricultural information through integrated mass media platforms to farmers, extension providers and other stakeholders;
• Capacity build extension service providers and relevant stakeholders in the agricultural sector on communication and use of ICT in agricultural information sharing;
• Develop, implement and review demand driven, tailor made agricultural short course to organized groups on use of digital media in agriculture; and
• To provide a seamless platform for collecting, processing and sharing of agricultural information, knowledge and skills among and within the agricultural value chain players in the crops, livestock, fisheries, irrigation and research subsectors to achieve food security and improved livelihoods.

The Centre operates a revolving fund managed by a Board of Management and established by a legal notice No. 163 of 25^th June, 1993 under the Exchequer and Audit Act (Cap.412). Public funding is received in the form of Recurrent (R10) and Development (D10) votes.